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Beatrice removed an enormous hatpin from that day’s elaborate bonnet. Ursella took it and ran up to Llewellyn, holding it carefully out in front of her. She, too, scrambled onto the playing area and cuddled up against the bear’s shoulder after passing the pin to Tabitha.
“Undo it, my dear.” Alwyn laid a hand on Tabitha’s back, and she did so.
The Change was slow, nothing like Mr. MacCafferty’s transformation from Himself: it was silent, soft, as watercolors bled when touched with a dampened brush. Mrs. Peasley took one of the silks off Gertrude’s couch and laid it over the bear—or what was once the bear, as the Change revealed the woman whose Shape it had concealed.
Her hair was tangled and unkempt but a deep, rich brown; her eyes were an emerald green that wavered with the yellow of her essential self. She blinked at the child at her shoulder, at Tabitha, at Alwyn, and turned her head to look out at those assembled.
“Arthur? Garben?” Her voice was little more than a rasp in her throat, as Alwyn’s had been when he had newly resumed his manskin.
The Humphries brothers froze. Charlotte gasped and surged to her feet. “Armelle,” she said as she charged through the crowd. “Blessed Freya and all her Valkyries—Armelle? Oh, gracious Thor, Armelle…”
Arthur and Ben followed in her wake; Tarben shouted, “Granny? Is that my granny?” as he and Bernadette joined their sleuth and huddled around the newly Changed figure.
The Humphries sons helped their mother backstage; Tabitha stood only to wobble on her feet, and Alwyn jumped to the ground to hand her down. Just as their hands touched, Asquith appeared from the opposite wing and in short order grabbed Tabitha by the hair and held a knife to her throat.
“The last mistake you will have made was to let me go.” Despite her delicate frame, the snake Shifter was, as expected, very strong. Tabitha did not bother to struggle. Alwyn made to spring to her aid, and the snake wrapped her other arm around Tabitha’s waist and slid the knife over her jugular, where it would do the most damage, most quickly.
“The first mistake,” Asquith continued, projecting to be heard in the back, “was to think we would allow one prize to escape us, much less two. Oh, yes, we have had the Duchess of Osborn—now the Dowager Duchess, one supposes—in our possession for ages, as well as the Wild Lion of Wales. Do not, Your Grace.” Lowell had come forward with his Second and Third, who halted at the lady author’s word. “Regard my blade.” She jerked Tabitha’s head back farther so the gold caught the light. “Nothing less than this for one such as you, Barrington, ahomo plenuswho, once let into our secrets, can see the truth beneath the skin.”
“Is that known?” Tabitha asked. Alwyn had not dropped his eyes from hers, and she directed this to him. Someone ought to write all this down and send it around theversipelliancommunity.
A pity its most renowned writer was a heartless villain.
“It is known among those who seek to avoid your kind like the plague.” Asquith laughed. “Do you succumb so easily, Barrington? Not even the slightest struggle?”
“I am not your equal in strength. I see no point in needless drama.”
“If you insist on disrespecting the narrative, then you will have to pay dearly for it.” Asquith drove Tabitha to her knees with little effort and pulled her head back so she could no longer see Alwyn. “His Grace was meant to search for you high and low, and thus fall into my hands, hands holding another golden chain at the ready, as once more he played the hero.”
“Played?” Tabitha would not give Asquith the satisfaction of betraying the fear coursing through her. “There is no playing when it comes to the duke’s heroism.”
“Women in love,” the lady author spat. “So predictable.”
“And yet you did not predict my ability to save myself?”
“How will you save yourself from this, eh? I will have you know I am adept with weapons—”
“Due to growing up in the itinerant troupe that evolved into Phineas Drake’s Equestrian Spectacular and Exotic Traveling Menagerie. Your brother, I believe, Mrs. Asquith?” Timothy stepped forward, cool as could be, as if his sister had a knife held to her throat every day. “Your many duties, apart from minor female parts as sadly you had no skill in that arena, were in the weapons line, shooting things off other things, throwing knives, and sundry magic tricks. The troupe began to lose business hand over fist until the family diverted its talents in nefarious directions, to renewed profit.”
“Years on the road and nothing to show for it,” Asquith snarled. “It was not playing to the masses like cavorting monkeys that made our fortune.”
“Ah, here now,” muttered Mr. Peasley.
“With the breadth of our serpentine knowledge and our skills at subterfuge, we were able to capture the likes of the bear and the lion, as none on this island could boast. It set us apart from the rest of the riffraff, and we were ready to depart for a grand tour of the Antipodes, until both of them escaped.”
“How can one such as you pursue this dire occupation?” Timothy asked.
Asquith tightened her arm around Tabitha’s waist. “My dragonskin gloves are my protection from the thrall of gold. The stone in my pendulum is from the diadem of Medusa. The crystal itself gave her the power to petrify those who gazed upon her until one of my lineage stole it from between her very eyes.”
“There is no such thing as dragons,” scoffed someone in the crowd.
“Diadem of Medusa?” muttered another. “What is she on about?”
“Things far beyond your ken, you who have not ventured five leagues from this village.” Asquith’s voice took on a decidedly East End timbre. “I shudder to think I was once as unworldly as you lot.”
“All the worldliness that came from, oh, being a traveling player?” Mrs. Peasley mused.
“Enough.” Alwyn’s voice rang out over all. “You cannot threaten the life of myvera amoris,myconiunctio, and go unchallenged. Here I am. Take me.”
